Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Acting Coach Los Angeles- Creating Personas

By Kirk Baltz


When it comes to acting, great abilities cannot be formed overnight. It is only through rigorous study and training that actors can reach their goals. One of the most necessary and yet difficult components of great acting is learning to rip past the facade that covers the actors themselves and the characters they create to reveal the true identities within.

Every character that an actor creates is multi-dimensional as are the actors themselves. The three dimensions, in particular, that compose the human person are the tragic flaw, the public persona, and our ubiquitous lifelong insecurities and difficulties. Working with an acting coach has been shown to be highly effective in helping an actor to see past his own exterior and that of his character to reveal the heart of the person within and create characters that are both real and relatable.

Carl Jung espoused the belief that the human person creates a public persona as a means of protecting his true self from others and conveying an image of strength and security as a means for survival. This persona is exemplified in all areas of our lives, from how we move to the way we speak and interact with others. Characters also have personas that they create to protect their true selves from the rest of the world and actors must learn to utilize their own personas to create those of their characters.

Although the public persona is the dimension that is the most easily recognizable and obvious in a character, it is only an exterior facade and not the core of the individual. However, the core of a person lies in their innate strengths, fears, and issues that travel with us from childhood into adulthood. Acting coaches are trained to teach actors to come face to face with their own childhood fears and issues in order to create a truly believable character with great depth and dimension.

These difficulties from our childhood remain with us to adulthood and shape the persona that we create to protect ourselves. Both actors and the characters they create form their public personas as a means of defending themselves from these insecurities. Both actual persons and characters use this public persona to cover up their insecurities and fears so as to reduce their helplessness in the world.

In order to become an exceptional actor, a student must learn to remove the superficial exterior of both his and his character's public persona in order to uncover the true self. The best coach will work with student actors in order to help them to remove the mask that they have spent a lifetime building.

Every audience member, whether he knows it or not, has both a deeper identity based in past life situations and issues as well as public persona that he has created to combat these weaknesses. Regardless of whether or not they are aware of this fact, creating a dimensional character will never fail to hit a chord with the watcher. All great actors must learn to succeed in this form of character creation.




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